Tuesday, 31 May 2011

As many of you will have seen on our new live web cam our female has not been on the nest incubating her three eggs for the last few days. This comes as a great disappointment to all of us here at the David Marshall Lodge as the eggs were due to start hatching yesterday.

We are still unsure of the reasons why the bird has stopped incubating her eggs, but we are fairly confident that it isn't disturbance as both male and female have been spotted on the nest. Unusually though the female is sitting on the side of the nest and every now and again she will touch one the eggs.

We are trying to say positive but things aren't looking very hopeful, but I will keep you all informed.

Wednesday, 25 May 2011

If you take a look at the right hand side of the blog you'll see that our images from the nest are no longer stills - we're now streaming live footage! These cracking pictures are being beamed directly from the osprey nest camera.

Just a quick update to say that after the hurricane strength winds on Monday I am happy to report that our osprey nest and ospreys both stood tight and battled against the winds. Our female is still incubating on the three egss which are due over the weekend. Our male is struggling to fish at the moment due to the ribbles that are being caused by the winds but he is being persistent, which is a good sign!

Monday, 23 May 2011

Well our ospreys are certainly experiencing the Scottish weather today with rain and high speed winds to tackle. It shouldn't be to long now before we start to see the first egg hatching, it will be 37 days on the 30th May ( a week today) since the first egg was laid.

I just thought that I would let you know about something that has been happening over the last few weeks on the nest that shows our new osprey pair are defiantly in love....

As with any other osprey pair its the male that is doing the fishing while the female is incubating the eggs on the nest. As we would expect the male is bringing the fish in headless having taken his share leaving the rest for the female. Usually what should happen is the female would fly away to eat the rest of the fish, while the male does a little incubation. But this is where our tale takes a twist!

Our female is flying off to perch on a nearby tree then bringing back some of the fish to give back to the male, kind of saying "Thanks I've had enough now would you like some more?"! How sweet :-)

P.S All 9 blue tit eggs hatched on Thursday and we currently still have 3 barn owl chicks, who are growing rather rapidly!